I, for one, could never have anticipated the Michael Gerson would use Trig Palin's emergence as a national figure as an opportunity to wax morally indignant:
The wrenching diagnosis of 47 chromosomes must seem to parents like the end of a dream instead of the beginning of a life. But children born with Down syndrome -- who learn slowly but love deeply -- are generally not experienced by their parents as a curse but as a complex blessing. And when allowed to survive, men and women with an extra chromosome experience themselves as people with abilities, limits and rights. Yet when Down syndrome is detected through testing, many parents report that genetic counselors and physicians emphasize the difficulties of raising a child with a disability and urge abortion.It's worth looking back at what eugenics actually was before throwing the term around willy-nilly. As practiced in the United States, eugenics involved the forced sterilization of grown women, without their knowledge, with a disproportionately large number of African-American and American Indian women affected. In other words, it was the practice of denying women reproductive choice and autonomy. Kind of like, oh I don't know, Sarah Palin and Michael Gerson want to do.This is properly called eugenic abortion -- the ending of "imperfect" lives to remove the social, economic and emotional costs of their existence. And this practice cannot be separated from the broader social treatment of people who have disabilities. By eliminating less perfect humans, deformity and disability become more pronounced and less acceptable. Those who escape the net of screening are often viewed as mistakes or burdens. A tragic choice becomes a presumption -- "Didn't you get an amnio?" -- and then a prejudice. And this feeds a social Darwinism in which the stronger are regarded as better, the dependent are viewed as less valuable, and the weak must occasionally be culled.
This might seem like a gotcha post, but there's a really serious point here. Eugenics wasn't murder. Eugenics was the denial of choice. The victims weren't the prospective children of the sterilized. The victims were the women. So it's not only false when Gerson uses "eugenics" as synonymous with abortion, it's extremely disrespectful to the victims and to the concept of women's personal autonomy generally. There are plenty of rhetorical devices Gerson can use to try to restrict women's freedom. He's a good enough speechwriter, so he ought to know them. He didn't have to choose one that uses the victims of patriarchy to reinforce male privilege. That's truly perverse.
